High Maintenance Ladies

It's been 5 weeks since the chicks arrived in the mail. And what a busy 5 weeks it's been! For starters, there were 2 weeks of sailing camp for my oldest in there. It was a day camp that required me to drive (with all the kids) 2 hours every day.... and that's with someone else hauling him the last 30 minutes of the drive! But at least my son was certified by US Sailing as a "small boat sailor" under light winds by the end of it all. 

credit: Chris Howell | Herald-Times

Said son also had a robotics day camp that required the same amount of driving each day. He presented his team's code on a giant screen to a large audience for the third year in a row. They won the Mars Rover Expedition Grand Challenge. He received a leadership award (again, for the third year running.) And in the end, his photo ended up on the cover of a newspaper, the accompanying article got nationally syndicated, and he was featured in their promo video. Go, boy, go!

My middle boy had his 5th birthday in the last 5 weeks. There was also a big family get-together for a weekend at a nearby campground. Think bugs, poison ivy, nearly as many dogs as children, hot grills, open fires, a toddler, etc. I don't think I need to say more about that! Our wedding anniversary fell in this time span, as well as Fathers Day and another storm that nearly blew the gazebo over. (Imagine me soaking wet trying to weight it down with cement blocks as it slid and moved and the kids all shouted directions from the windows :) 

I prepped and re-grouted the shower surround in the boys' bathroom in the last 5 weeks. I even started removing the carpet on the stairs. To make things crazier, my husband had a business trip one of those weeks. Maybe there were two trips in there? Really it's all a blur. I'm sure he was gone for the tornado warning which I spent in the basement with the kiddos until an indecent hour. (Of course it was all torn up because my husband had removed all of the ancient ceiling insulation shortly before.) And I'm sure he was gone the day the tree fell across our drive when we went to drop off my oldest. (Another one fell into the hay field!) That involved shifting everyone to the truck, driving through the hay, across the dam, around the hay barn, and through our neighbor's property in order to get him to his destination on time. And it meant parking halfway up our long drive on the return trip, climbing through the tree with all the other kiddos, and lugging the 16 month old all the way back to the house. It also included returning to the truck with snow sleds in order to haul the groceries up to the house, etc.)  I'm also sure that he was gone when the air conditioner was repaired. And he was definitely gone the day after the the Chicken Civil War began. Right... so, back to the "girls." Being a Catholic, litanies come naturally to me- sorry! 

I got heritage breed chickens. They are hardy, good foragers, and have more anti-predator instinct left in them. And then I figured that since they were to be layers and there would be 15 of them, that it would be handy for them to all look different in order to keep track of health, whereabouts, etc. I tried hard to get the smaller, lightweight birds, so that they would be pretty evenly matched, could fit into a smaller roosting space, and would use less food to produce eggs as well. This all seemed reasonable at the time... use up table scraps, reduce the local insect population, fertilizer for gardening, fresh eggs for the family, teach the kids a bit about animal husbandry, etc.

I was not prepared for the headache this has been. We've had baby birds before, both chickens and ducks. We have not, however, had quite so many. I think 8 is the most I've raised at once. Add to that the fact that these ladies are feisty heritage breeds instead of Production Reds, and different breeds that mature at different rates, and they've been a maintenance nightmare. 

Things started out with the trip-induced pasty butt. That got me one "girl" in the house in a box, and me scrubbing lots of chicken rumps at intervals while fussing over their feed. Next came my 5 year old squeezing a bird he held too tightly. I'll let you imagine the rest of that story. Then they started being able to move the brooder ring when running to the other side in unison. And not too long after that, they began flying out of the 2 foot tall brooder ring. So I moved them to the bottom of my chicken coop with the roof off. It only took a while before they flew over that too.

As I was deciding whether to move them outside or make a bigger and taller brooder ring, they started pecking each other. It was probably innocent. Their self-preservation instinct was so active, that they were a flurry of feathers and squeaking no matter how many times I fed them, changed their water, changed their bedding, handled them, adjusted the heat lamp, etc. So I bet the first injured bird happened when, as they scrambled over and under each other, one of their backs got scratched. At that point, another instinct kicked in- to peck at anything red, and the poor pullet got a bit bloodied and de-feathered on her back. Ugh! That made 2 birds in boxes in the "stone room."

I made a 4 foot tall ring so that they wouldn't fly out, made it much bigger than the coop, and added roosts and scratch and stuff. I checked on them often. Nearly immediately 2 more birds were mildly bloodied. FUN! So after running in circles in a flurry of claws, beaks, and feathers in order to single out the injured ones, I had a regular chicken infirmary with gentian violet colored birds in their own little cubicles. That made 5 chicken abodes to feed water and change. That was obviously not tenable, so I worked most of a night to get the chicken run buttoned up, but even with my battery lantern and the garage light, it got too dark to complete. But I can tell you that the good parts about working on a chicken run in the dark as a thunderstorm brews above you, the temps hover at 85 with with 80% humidity, and the insects enjoy you for their late night snack are as follows: You get to hear the bullfrogs sing bass below the chorus of the crickets and tree frogs, while the mosquitoes and gnats make thin noises like the strings, and thunder rumbles like kettle drums in the distance. You get to see clouds of moths dancing about the lamp as the lightning bugs rise out of the hay field behind it, flashing against the dark sky that trembles with intermittent lighting. And the claw on the hammer makes a good back scratcher!

The silver thing is the larger brooder ring.
Behind it is the wire hoop run.
The gray thing is the roof removed from the coop.

So the next day, scratching at bug bites, sore, and even more tired than usual, I moved the ring and birds outdoors, figuring they were bored, and I worked like mad to complete the run. The wind kept blowing the ring over, and once a few birds escaped for a bit. But I got the run in workable condition, attached the coop, and moved 10 chickens (because 1 died, and 4 were still in the chicken infirmary) before it was time to pick up my oldest. 

We went inside to clean up, and one of the "infirmarians" had escaped. We were limited on time, as we didn't want to be late, so after chasing her around unsuccessfully, (my toddler thoroughly enjoyed this!) we had to leave her loose, wedged behind a desk where she had taken shelter. On the way home we got stuck in traffic for a long time due to an accident. We watched in horror as a storm blew in. And a doozie blew through as we sat in the car. We worried about whether the pullets would be smart enough to go into the coop to stay dry when they had not been roosting in it yet and might not recognize it with the roof on. We wondered if the tree it was under and the proximity to the house had protected the run from the wind. We came home and found them wet and huddled together in a corner of the run. The tarp, tree, and house had done little to protect them. So then I had pneumonia or some such thing to worry about, not to mention the chicken loose in one of my rooms to tend to. And yup, my hubby was gone for the second round of birdie bloodbath and chicken drowning too.

But the story ends happily (so far.) None of the chickens got sick. The injured and de-feathered birds have been duly coated with yet another layer of gentian violet and returned to the flock and seem to be getting along better than the neurotic way they were in their individual boxes. Hopefully they continue to recuperate. The chicken mess is cleaned up. The "ladies" are roosting at night, scratching in the run during the day, and going into the coop voluntarily now when I go out to shut them up. (Yes, they needed to be individually caught and placed in the coop each night at first. I think maybe now I'll train them to go into their coop at night when I sing, "Goodnight Ladies." What do you think?) They are eating table scraps and taking dust baths. The kids are racing downstairs each morning to see who can let the chickens out. Most of their feathers are in, and they are doing a great job weeding the gravel pad behind my garage. But they remain high maintenance. And... my husband is out of town again this week.